The present invention relates in general to materials handling vehicles, and more particularly to overhead guards for materials handling vehicles.
Vehicle operator overhead guards are common devices found on a wide variety of material handling vehicles such as fork lift trucks. The overhead guard provides a barrier between the vehicle operator and objects that may free fall from positions located above the operator. Such falling objects may result for example, from unstable objects in a rack, bin, stack or other location in the work area proximate to and above the vehicle operator.
In a typical warehouse or distribution center, palletized stock items are stored in bins, racks or other storage structures that are aligned to each side of generally long, parallel extending aisles. To maximize available space, it is not uncommon for several storage structures to be vertically stacked, such that stock may be stored at heights up to 7 meters or more. Accordingly, an operator of a materials handling vehicle that is retrieving and/or putting away stock may be required to look upward from an operating position of the vehicle towards the mast to properly identify the proper height of the forks for stock to be retrieved or put away. However, a conventional overhead guard is spaced horizontally over the operator and extends towards the mast to provide a barrier between falling objects and the operator. The conventional overhead guard thus invariably limits the visibility of the operator when trying to view the raised forks of the vehicle.